Video Killed the Video Star: Anime Music Videos Leave Gamification Vaccume

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How AMVs became the bad cholesterol of anime fandom.

The Anime Music Video (AMV), was once a potent and significant component of American otaku community development and enabler of social mobility within the various strata of fandom. It has since devolved into the Toxoplasma Gondii of Anime fandom everywhere, spreading to everything, and accomplishing nothing.

Kill all the hyoomans!

Technological realities once kept the supply of AMVs down to a low stream of relatively few per year for two reasons. First, the editing skill, available anime video library, and hardware needed to actually complete an AMV used to be quite significant and unattainable for many otaku. Such limitations included age, financial reach, and most importantly, talent. This resulted in the AMV being a time consuming effort, undertaken by the few individuals who were confident enough in their abilities and resources to produce a proper AMV. Second, once made, AMV distribution was extraordinarily limited to basically the convention circuit, and a few clubs that managed to get a copy of AMV competition reels or talk Duane Johnson into making a copy of his collection on VHS. They were rare and they were unique, making the level of "otaku bragging points" they carried pretty high on the totem pole.

The AMV is still a part of otaku culture, but this art form has gone from something of high-value, to the lowest possible level of filler activity on par with fanfic writing. Sure you might find one out there that only slightly sucks ...maybe (talkin about fanfics here), but there are millions of poorly written fanfic linguistic vomitbags being churned out by high school freshmen who've got a boner for Gurren Lagann. Neotakus who are just starting to attend conventions since the day after youtube was invented will never experience the dynamic that the AMV formerly played in the social hierarchy of otaku culture.

Lets list the factors which caused this transition. While it's tempting to just write "The Internet" for every single reason behind the downfall of the AMV as a tool of gamification, we're going to try to be a bit more specific.

The 5 Reasons AMVs are Dead*:

#5) Linkin Park: There is no single demarcation line where AMVs definitively became the bad cholesterol of anime fandom, but that year where literally every other submission in the Otakon AMV contest was Linkin Park set to "anyfuckinganimeever" comes painfully close. The viewing was painful, the premises were crap, and it got so bad so fast, that within 2 years the Linkin Park AMV had degenerated into a fucking parody of itself.

What no one realized at the time, was that the rage virus was out of the monkey, and AMVs now became the battleground of emo Weaboo who brought the product of their own "deep" introversion to the anime fandom scene despite the fact that no one asked them to. Look, every generation goes through its "they just don't get me" phase, but what's unforgivable about the post-internet emOtaku crowd is that they shoved that into the AMV contest to the point where we actually hurt our asses waiting for all that shit to be over so we could watch the 5 funny ones at the end of the contest screening.

There's a part of one of the AMV Hell collections (I think) that is 10 Linkin Park songs set to Evangelion over about 30 seconds, but I can't find it. Just use your imagination.

Proper criticism at the time (2003-04): I know you feel a certain way you little emo bastard, but why can't you just read manga while blasting the music they play at Hot Topic? Don't shit into the pool of AMVs out there. You're seriously ruining this for everyone, junior.

#4) Self Esteem: The Mr. Rogers effect of injecting "you're super special and awesome" levels of self esteem by helicopter parents into their precious snowflakes, has had some devistating effects. In terms of AMVs it has allowed some of the crappiest shit to exist by rendering their makers immune to self-criticism and the ability to feel shame and disgust when they step up to the public stage with a work that is painfully sub-par. Perfectionism has taken a back seat to a self centered mentality of throwing out absolute garbage just to prove to others how big a fan of Ouran High School Host Club you are. This is in and of itself a gamification behavior, but has a muted effect due to other factors coming up on this list.

The day youtube dropped 5 star rating for thumbs up or down style was the day we lost our last chance, and past the event-horizon of fail.

AMVs stopped being special when some shithead decided that leaving the subtitles in the final edit was OK. If the subtitles are anywhere in the AMV, you suck - redo it! If there's a DIVX or TV station bug in the corner that comes and goes, you suck - redo it! If you start the video by matching up things litteraly with the song and then stop doing that half way through, you suck - redo it! Failure needs to be accessible early and often, for it leads to self-correction, discipline, and a productive sense of determination. Sadly this isn't happening in America because since 1975, the youth of America have always been told the lie that 100% of what they do/say/think has some sort of value in objective reality. Spoiler alert: That's bullshit.

There's a reason that amateurs aren't allowed to drive F1 cars, there's a reason that NASA rejects 99% of their applicants, and there's a reason why your AMV sucks and shouldn't see the light of day (but apparently you haven't heard it yet).

This should not exist. It should have been taken down in shame, and the person who made it should have bettered themselves with practice until they could produce something that could stand on par with what an AMV should be. Yet the comments are full of "omg! you put a character I like in there so therefore this is totally awesome! squeeee!!!!!" This is why we can't have nice things.

Proper criticism at the time (2008-Yesterday): You suck, and here a list of things you did wrong as certified by experts in video editing, rolled up inside a huge bag of shame! Yes, I know you got a whole bunch of thumbs up on youtube, but those are from 12 year olds who just happen to like Deathnote & Nickelback.

#3) "Fuck you, Japan!": No matter what happens, Japanese studios and publishers always seem to retain a fundamental lack of market understanding no matter how many times it's explained to them that things like AMVs are not piracy and that shutting them down will do nothing to protect their sales, and only generate a wedge effect, further de-humanizing themselves in the faces of American fans making them look like "faceless corporations" making lots of money and doing what they will in the face of customer input (like Apple).

In no way can AMVs really have any tangible negative effect on anime titles and brands. They are helpful indicators of brand strength, and help grow the market for a title as well as energize current customers. They don't displace sales, they don't replace the original program, no one is going to not buy K-ON because there's a 3 minute music video with a little sexual innuendo on youtube out there instead.


So what's the problem? Well, if you watched that AMV, you might notice that there were 35 different anime titles in there. How much you wanna bet that they are all from legit DVD purchases or downloads and not a single one was pirated at all? Yeah...

Studios seeing an AMV don't see a marketing tool for high-intensity and high-context customer engagement with gamification dynamics... they see a fucking bootleg of their title that someone illegally downloaded and just happened to use an an AMV! Horrible over-reaching analogy: If your child died in an accident and I downloaded their genetic code and cloned my own version using a rented uterus, it wouldn't really matter to you if you never found out. But if I kept making videos of my clone of your dead kid and shoving them in your face, you're not gonna approach things very rationally. Same thing is happening here to a lesser extreme; You're just shoving the fact that you stole their license right into the face of the writers, animators, artists, sound engeneers, directors, and office workers who make anime for a living. They're not going to see past that, and therefore continue to be hostile to AMVs.

Proper criticism at the time (1999): Gentlemen, thank you for joining me at the first international Japanese animation global marketing conference. I'm glad to see every anime studio and distribution label represented here. Now, let me tell you about multi-platform viral marketing strategies...

#2) Digital Everything: AMVs were once like hot-rod cars. People worked hard on them, stuck in very unique aspects that no one else would have access to, and then the would take them someplace where they could show them off to other people who would be impressed with their work. Otaku points would abound if you could find footage of an anime that almost no one had ever seen before, or a JPop song that was currently burning up the charts. Using multiple titles in a rapid fire mode was a pretty awesome thing to do, because it meant that this person has lots of anime and knows where to find these scenes. Almost nothing screamed "I'm more Otaku than you" louder and to more people than a top-tier AMV. The best example of this, forever and all time, has got to be Duane Johnson's "Dare to be Stupid" AMV, which at this point is pushing 15 years. Think about that.


This had incredible value, because lots of this footage wasn't easy to find at the time. It didn't even matter if you had/have no idea what those titles are, the song ties everything together in a literal sense so you don't miss out on the enjoyment factor. The elusiveness of all of the different anime titles in there, combined with the quality of the editing meant that this was worth some crazy otaku points back when there was no way your stupid ass was ever going to get a copy of this AMV for yourself.

No longer is that the case. While the digital revolution did basically create the separate but related creative forms of the"Overdub" and the "Mashup," which have as much if not more entertainment value, the damage done to AMVs was severe and irreparable. AMVs lost their ability to add value to social fandom the day a few mouse clicks could conjure up any footage of any anime almost instantly. To top it all off, it would already be encoded in a digital video form, ready to go for whatever low-end editing software you had. The result?



Somehow underwhelming.





Or just total shit.
Proper criticism at the time (2001): "Can" ≠ "Should" ...Any questions?

#1) The Fucking Internet: In this context I simply mean that it's now far too easy to just sit down wherever you are whip out a smartphone and have access to enough AMVs to litteraly occupy every second of every day for-fraking-ever... instantly. Watching AMVs was once something only available to convention attendees, and even then only for 90 minutes or so. They were so valuable that in the 1990's I would enter the Otakon AMV contest just to get copies of the other entries (they were always good though, my last was in 2002). We'd show them on the Anime Crash CCTVs every now and then to a packed house, and that was because these things were rare pieces of Otaku fandom. You'd never fill an anime store (let alone convention) these days by announcing you were going to show a few AMVs, because you could watch the same thing at home in your undies while doing 3 other things online at the same time.

Over-abundance via saturated distribution has caused just about every problem there is with the decline of the AMV. Some things should not be available to 11 year olds, and the internet enables them into producing total crap. Even enabling an entire generation of retards who can't tell which songs aren't actually by Weird Al Yancovic. Nice AMV but it's not Weird Al. Not that one either. No, not that other one, I don't care if it "sounds" like him. Really? Weird Al's own website says that's not his! And so on and so forth. The unreliability of the internet mixed with the notion that your opinions somehow have value (from #4) have combined to create a fan that literally thinks that their retarded tumor-baby of an AMV they've created from an anime they like and Windows Movie Maker is something other than a sickening creation deserving of only contempt. Contempt that you've wasted everyone's time on this crap.

The result of commoditized AMVs made possible only via the internet (nothing else could do it) has had two major effects:
A) AMVs are now not only abundant but tremendously accessible. Searching AMV libraries by theme, character, song, series, artist, etc, has become so easy, that the need to seek them out at conventions is no longer prevelant.
B) Development A has caused the value of the AMV as it pertains to the social structure of the American Otaku market market to deflate, leaving a vaccume in sources for "Otaku-points."

Proper criticism at the time (1998-99): WE'RE DOOOOOMED!

AMVs and Gamification.

I truly believe that the explosion in cosplay that has come to dominate Otaku convention culture over the past 5-10 years, was (in part) a result of the "points" vacuum created by the hyper-commoditization of the AMV. Otaku Wee'Bos could no longer tangibly rise further in the fandom hierarchy via the creation or possession of AMVs, because they were everywhere and anyone could make one at that point. This left the option of creating a costume better than those of the other schlubs as one of the few viable means to earn slight elevations in the pecking order.

Anime fans often socially interact in ways in which establish a hierarchy where rank is based on possession of items, fandom knowledge, important contacts, or other things with limited access. That means everyone is trying to out-fan each other a lot of the time (not always). I assign the term "Gamification" to this dynamic, but that's not really accurate, as "Gamification" is a more structured group activity where the channels of upward mobility are top-down designed and implemented by a central authority which engages in pull-marketing (think FourSquare). In the otaku social space, these channels of upward mobility and rules of engagement have developed organically, and therefore are also subject to intense fluctuations, so when you win you really win, but you also run the risk of a ton of worthless currency, such as AMVs.

As noted, AMVs formerly held a position of high value currency but are now pretty much worthless in that grand scheme of things:



For clarification: Rare means that the overall supply is a low ratio of AMVs to Otaku, where as and Limited Access means that there are only a few channels which can deliver AMVs to Otaku, regardless of how many AMVs there are. The rest other categories should be obvious. Such qualities made the possession and creation of AMVs a source of otaku fan authority, and the more you had, the more points you earned. Bring an AMV reel to an anime club meeting and you were god (or close).

But, the need to engage in the social activity and the gamification that such activity still entails, means that something must step up to fill that need. There have always been extreme sources of otaku legitimization; Industry Job, Published Artist, Voice Actor, Big Retailer, etc, but these opportunities are simply too few to contribute to the larger mass of regular otaku consumers (many of which are just too young for any of that) and fill the gap that AMVs have left with their devaluation. Enter cosplay:

AMV scores a little differently against Cosplay here. Rather than having all X marks, because this table of comparison is for a convention setting, where an obscure title is still worth something and where there's always an air of competition in almost everything.
In this case, Limited access means that (unless you're Danny Choo) you don't cosplay to work on the train every day, and in order for your cosplay to satisfy your own motivational needs (and thereby create intangible value), the cosplayer requires an audience. There are two kinds of audiences, passive and the engaged. An example of a Passive audience would be passers by at the Yoyogi Park entrance off of Harajuku, who were not planning on seeing any cosplayers but, there they are. Reactions can range from mild interest to recalcitrant hostility if their path to the train is blocked... or some d-bag is dressed up like a Nazi. Then there are the engaged audiences such as those at anime conventions, who have planned to see cosplay activities and competitions. Both of these audience types create value for the cosplayer, but the engaged types are more likely to provide a kind of legitimization of hierarchy when it comes to where the cosplayer fits into the rest of the otaku universe by being better or worse than average.

To that effect, I would very much like to see something like a major and indisputable source of cosplay criticism. Not constructive criticism, mean criticism. A fountain of shameful, hateful, negative sentiment, washing away the unwarranted self-confidence that enables cos-tards with terrible costumes the ability to leave the house. The collateral damage they cause with poorly made hallway-clogging inspirations for eye-bleach must be called out as harmful by the otaku public, forcing these morons to better their attempts at cosplay before stepping out in public to inflict their lack of talent on the rest of us. This will help cosplay retain a position of being something that gives those otaku who excel at it, a higher standing in the fandom, and remain a viable gamification activity. You ever see a "bad" Japanese cosplay? No. Know why? Because the Japanese still have shame, and if they suck, they don't want other people to see that. While Cosplay Hell does exist, it really needs to create a standardized rubric of cosplay fail, then feed it into the internet hate machine engines and take a more active role in discouraging every lumpy pumpkin who likes Read or Die from going to a con in some god-awful rendition of whatever character and ruin cosplay for everyone... making it worthless and spreading it everywhere... ya know, like what happened to AMVs.

Self esteem. It's a bad thing.

Final note: Discourse continues in the comments, opposing and supporting views are welcome. Comments are moderated because I get lots of spam (check out this entry to see what happens when comment mod is off). That's the only reason for moderation, real comments will be approved as quickly as possible.

* (added July 18); Well now that the internet and everyone has seen this and taken it the wrong way, I obviously have some explaining to do. I go into this down in the comments, but just in case you weren't in the mood to slog though another wall of words, "Dead" in this case was the wrong term (high-context, which only makes sense to me, because I don't get other people to read these things before they go up). I only mean "Dead" in terms of AMVs as a high-return source of competitive gamification "points" in the otaku socual fanscape. So it's only in terms of the ability to produce a fandom silo-breaking gamification value that AMVs have fallen tremendously. The enjoyment value isn't the same as gamification value, since while gamification value exists and has a specific dynamic, it (usually) does not produce as much motivation to so something as the enjoyment value which is also very real, but just not the same thing. AMVs still produce a significant quantity of enjoyment value for participants and viewers, but inadequately articulated the way that is separate from the organic competitive gamification behavior that exists in anime fandom (or almost any fandom for that matter). Therefore "dead" is more like "dry well" or "vestigial feature" or "Zimbabwe dollar" but only specifically as the gamification mechanisms are concerned, AMVs are still fun to watch and do provide a sense of satisfaction when finished.

To go even further, "Gamification" isn't even the 100% correct term here, but that's addressed in Section 2 "AMVs and Gamification" paragraph 2.

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Identity Crisis, what does "Otaku" mean?

The label of “Otaku” and what it means for community and industry.

For the sake of clarity let’s just stick to the strictly American definition of “Otaku.”

Long ago, there was a Ninja Consultants podcast which asked if one of the hosts, Erin, could be both a hipster and otaku at the same time. My answer was yes, but thanks to the late hour of the recording session (and totally not because of that vodka I drank), I wasn’t able to articulate why I came to that conclusion, even though I was the only one who thought so. Recently I had a little epiphany about how to correctly explain how one can be a hipster and otaku at the same time. My inspiration came from an incident about a week ago, where I was actually able to spot a purebred douchebag in the wild.

A Douchebag in the wild. Crikey!
Mmmmmm, smell that TAG Body Spray.
The train was moving, so the photo isn’t great... but still, just look at that.

From the retarded looking sunglasses in the subway, to the sneakers that are trendy enough to get into the night club, this guy had the whole d-bag gambit covered. Energy drink, hoody under a sport coat, stupid hair, giant ring, and the date-rape apology flowers, all combine to make this an amazing find so far from Jersey Shore territory.

“Hipster” is basically the same, a hollow vapid set of criteria that are the result of specific and quantifiable brand profiles and manifested marketing matrices in the deliberate choices in outward appearance and social activity of the individual. Though the Hipsters themselves will tell you the opposite and insist that they are so indie that their shirt don’t fit. They project this outward appearance and subscribe to a limited set of behaviors because the commercial media they consume has told them to. The true irony of the term “hipster,” is that it singularly describes a very specifically defined market demographic cluster.

“Otaku” is not like that. While “Hipster” and “Douchebag” define specific singular groups defined by the multiple aspects they project, “Otaku” labels a diverse group unified only by a singular activity of liking anime and manga. So “Otaku” is too diverse and too broad to be an effective target of concerted marketing efforts. This is not to say that there is no top of the pyramid within this group, just look at anime conventions. But even at these conventions, while the lion’s share of attendees do fit into a rather narrow demographic set (age and so on), if you really look at who’s there, you’ll see many different clusters which respond to very different marketing.

It is impossible for Otaku and Hipster to be mutually exclusive, because the defining activities one can engage in to be both to not conflict or cancel each other out. So although it’s very possible to be one and not the other, this is not a zero-sum situation, much in the same way that people of the same ethnicity or nationality can be different religions.

This isn’t “indefinability” or even “intangibility” that makes Otaku a valuable thing that can’t be fully penetrated by commercial marketing mechanics, but rather this quality of formlessness (yeah, I know all those words are next to each other in the Thesaurus). "Otaku" as a phenomenon is like water, in the sense that it takes the shape of whatever vessel it’s in, and so as a business, you’re marketing to that more definable vessel, not the Otaku-ness inside. This is why Apollo Smile and similar creations have failed in the past. The imagined target cluster is actually a combination of other clusters that have a more dominant role in customer behavior. This was the true source of that flavor of disingenuous which seemed to cover everything that Apollo was. Much like the buzzword new media marketers will talk about "organic brand creation," the only effective brand ambassador entities that can be called “Otaku” are ones that come from bottom-up and not top-down. Being an otaku is going to be a lot less fun if that quality is ever taken away, since the obvious logical thing it’s going to turn into is “Weaboo,” a terrifying prospect to say the least. But like the term “Hipster,” “Otaku” is sometimes intentionally used when describing one’s self, and also deliberately not used by other people, so it's got that going for it at least.

Again, all of this is prefaced on my own definition of Otaku for this particular case, which is not the Japanese definition (which is horrifying) and of which there exist English speaking examples like this freak here. (That link is dead because the nutjob who made it got all butthurt, but you can see bits of it here ... the crazy starts about 1:45 in).  He's obsessed with a jpop star he'll never ever be in the same room with). Yes that’s real and yes that’s 11 kinds of messed up. I would define “Otaku” here as a combination of media consumption habits, accumulated knowledge, and some other stuff. I hesitate to get too far into defining it with quantitative measurements, which leads to the problem I just mentioned of what happens of Otaku loses its portability between other groups. That is the strength which keeps this term out of the realm of being a commoditized managed-brand, and as much as I like business, I am happy to leave “Otaku” right where it is, an intangible product of the collective identity of fans.

See, an Otaku can have this in their office, and Hipsters don't work in offices (they write indie music while keeping the beard hairs off of their ironic ipads while being noticed by other hipsters and the occasional member of the stroller mafia at coffee houses). ...actually, I don't know what happened to this thing... it's gotta be around somewhere.
- I actually did have a much more thorough written explination with some ven diagrams based on actual data from icv2 and some Japanese sources, along with trend and perception mapping... but then I realized that that's giving it away for free. So if you want them, I'll send them your way when the check clears.

Downward Spiral: Rise and Fall of Anime?

Yeah, I’m talking about you.


Hello Otaku readers, and others who shall not be named.


So CNN Go has run this “rise and fall” style list about anime as a viable contributor to popular entertainment. Notice I use the word “contributor” and not “product.” This is because this article glosses over any actual business or strategy issues which had to do with the stated outcome, and only puts emphasis on the cultural fan aspects of the back and forth between Japan and the rest of the world which always has a certain color tint to it in terms of which land mass you’re standing on. This is not to say that emphasis on the “fandom” aspects of pop culture development and distributive interpolation between otaku japonica and the rest of the world is misplaced, but rather is only one half of the delicious black and white cookie that is the anime universe we all seem to share space in… in one form or another.

In particular, it was point for year 2005, on the early shift of the style of commercial anime being made that had me raising the out of bounds flag. Not that it’s wrong in describing what happened, but it leaves out the necessary “why.” The “Densha Otoko” thing is something that seems to be a likely source of directional change if we apply a Hollywood style trend-chasing idiot flash in the pan mentality to the Japanese entertainment industry. But that’s not really how it works, one need only compare that popular anime with the hero with the yellow hair who wears orange and must increase his fighting ability under the tutelage of great masters in order to defeat his black haired blue wearing nemesis who has evil powers to save the girl he likes… no not that yellow haired orange clad fighter, the other one. The Japanese entertainment business is a business, and a Japanese business at that, meaning that Japanese business sensibilities are going to be what steers the wheel here and Japanese business sensibilities are quite the opposite from trend chasing, and much more in the “stick with what works” camp. Just look at how long the LDP was running things? (The "stick with what we think works" strategy at least)

Well then what’s with the change in focus? The answer is two fold. First; there really wasn’t a massive shift in the type of content being produced, only in how much of it was being dumped into the U.S. market, and second; the reason is YOU. Yes American otaku, I hate to do the bubble bursting again, (you've heard it here before) but you are NOT part of the anime market. Your existence means next to nothing to most IP producers here in Japan, and yet you keep thinking that somehow the fact that there is such a strong fandom in the U.S. has some sort of bearing on what happens in the boardrooms of Bandai or Pony Canyon or whoever is bankrolling the next project. Well at the risk of alienating any more American otaku, let me just say that you mean nothing to the anime industry and it’s your own damned fault. Why you may ask? Because you’re not profitable in the least. The American market has simply sucked up content at an astounding rate, without providing any net present value for the companies that outlay cash to produce them. It’s folly for me to think that I could actually convince some anime fan that in early 2008, watching fansubbed episodes of Gurren Lagann and then cosplaying as Kamina or Bachika is really an insult to Gainax and other Japanese companies, but believe me, that’s what it is and that’s what those companies feel with a high degree of impact. Here they are having made this product, ready to license it to the U.S., and you are in their face saying “I’ve already seen it and so don’t need to pay you or your licensee anything… thanks for the free show.”

So in short, the reason that anime has become so very Japanese-centric is because anime is Japanese, and only the domestic audience provides these companies with significant revenue (revenue as opposed to profits… revenue is what you use to pay your staff and keep the lights on). America in this instance, save for a few properties and Puffy Ami Yumi, is more or less worthless, since none of what the fans do in their media consumptions benefits the actual producers in the slightest. If the U.S. market could actually earn money, then you bet these producers would care about appealing to it. But since American fandom seems intent on pissing on the hard work of Japan, by watching fansubs and de-valuing licenses before they can ever be capitalized (like I have said before, if the core audience watches the title online before a broadcast license is in place, then that potential license becomes worthless since the core audience has already seen the piece and so any station airing it can not guarantee advertisers that a certain amount of people will watch, making that property worthless), then it will be a long time before Japan cares what works in the U.S.

The reason anime is declining in general even in its domestic market, is because the Japanese market itself isn’t what used to be. There are a few reasons for that, like JPY stagflation, prohibitive costs, change in lifestyle of the average Japanese citizen, but the main reason is the age-bulge. I’ve gone into this before, but the basic reality of it is that a ridiculously percentage of Japanese are now over 60, and it will just keep going up for a while. You know what people over 60 don’t do? Watch anime (except for Sazae-san, which I’m sure you’ve never heard of), and they don’t really buy manga either. They travel Japan, play golf if they’re able, and watch cooking shows and the “Go” channel (yes, there’s an entire cable channel dedicated to people playing that game). So much of the anime produced is for the outnumbered Japanese youth that see nothing but the bleakest of bleak economic futures where they will have to work to support mom, dad, grandma & grandpa x2, and god forbid any kids they might have… From SaiKano to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 the future sucks if you’re under 30… or 40 for that matter, and a massive cataclysm might just make your life easier if you actually live through it.

Each generation has something that speaks for it. The fact is, that in the U.S. at the time, anime spoke for huge chunks of Gen X and Gen Y mostly because it simply was not the Hanna-Barbera Americanized crap that the baby boomers seemed to think would last forever. Not because anime had some universal appeal outside of Japanese cultural sensibilities. Akira was simply “cool” in the U.S. because it had very high quality animation, cool motor-cycles, and all kinds of action (like when that guy got shot a whole lot and there was blood everywhere… dude yeah… heh cool). The socio-political themes of late 1980’s Japan were completely lost on American audiences, but they were in Akira none the less. This is s symptom of anime that would last a decade, with each culture superimposing it’s own experiences and identities onto a medium which (at that time) lent itself so easily to that activity by having character designs and settings that were so ethnically and culturally ambiguous as to not give the slightest pause to totally immersing oneself into the story. That’s either not possible or necessary now, and the Hot-Topic Twilight crowd now seems to be where merchandisers and licensors want to go… leaving celluloid gravestones in their wake.




And now for something not so completely different:
Warning: Otaku-Fandom rant to be forthcoming.

Real anime fans out there, yes that includes even you weaboos, should be worried about this. The reason is that the Darwinian wheel of fandom spares nothing that shows weakness. Fringes of abhorrent behaviors of human society will always try to climb on board the weakest platforms of popular culture. One of the major casualties that we can look back on which has happened recently is the anthro or “furry” fandom. Here’s a fandom which, in the 1980’s was just another indie comic genre that had everything going for it. Now, it’s associated with everything from skunk fuckers to pedo-freaks. Anime is showing some dangerous cracks in the façade where this kind of thing is going to sneak in and ruin it for the rest of us. Much as I often agree with the guys over at Santoku Complex in defending fictional depictions of anything ever (since it’s fiction, so that’s that) I believe there IS a line that can’t be crossed.

For example, horror movie fans can watch whatever kind of slasher, chainsaw dismemberment movie they wish to, because it’s a movie, but putting that notion into practice, is not a good thing. So although I am a very staunch supporter of the rights of the individual to consume drawn/animated/CGI artwork of anything they choose, I have to draw the line when the type of people who advocate putting that into real practice jump on the fandom bandwagon proclaiming it as a manifestation of lifestyle. No. No no no. People who support the freedom of expression and common sense notions of a drawing being a drawing have to stop at some point when it comes to giving the inch that would become a mile to the actual pedos out there. The whole “Freedom-tan” notion and the organization behind it are an example of something that crosses the line, just a little. The reason is, that the reason they defend such properties is because they obviously believe in putting such notions into practice. No, not everyone there does... probably not even half the people there do, but there's going to be that 10% which is going to paint the other 90% in that light. To have this associated with Japanese pop-culture, is an insult and a serious problem when it comes to having anime and other japanese pop culture products being taken seriously as a commercial product.

First: no, you’re not Japanese, don’t think that adding “tan” to the end of your mascot/slogan/mission statement/whatever, gives you an insight into actual Japanese sensibilities. You don’t live in Japan, and by doing this you're really not gonna make many friends there because believe it or not, while tolerated, this kind of thing is regarded as more or less creepy, because you're never sure if these guys are gonna take that fandom one step too far into real life.

Second: The basic ideas of freedom here, is to allow for freedom of expression, such as those within the Constitution of the United States of America. While noble, this is by no means universal, and may not apply to you in the same way or at all, since you have a monarch on your money (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ ), or might be living down the street from a monarch like in Tokyo, Thailand, or Brunei. I can't fucking stand when some retarded American starts jumping up and down about "constitutional rights" when they're in another country... They don't apply you dumbass, and this attempt to superimpose them onto other countries with different cultural sensibilities and (more importantly) different laws based on those sensibilities, is the dictionary definition of "stupid American."

Third: While it is deplorable that someone would be prosecuted for having fictional depictions of anything which in practice is illegal (such as murder, terrorism, drug use, underage sex, dog-fighting, dolphin BBQ, etc) having actual film of that criminal act being committed, is simply having evidence of a crime that has been committed, and that leads straight to legal gray areas of all sorts. If you were trading real snuff films it might be the same.

I could go on forever, but the basic premise here is that anime fans had fought long and hard against mainstream media to make sure that commercial markets did not associate the genre with nothing but sex and violence. We succeeded and anime become (albeit an unsustainable) genre of entertainment. Now, that anime is showing weakness as a commercial property, pedophiles and skunk-fuckers are jumping all over small bits of the darkest depths of doujin manga and 2am anime and calling attention to it as if it was a validation of their genuine desire to have sex with 8 year olds. So far, the only defense against this kind of infiltration has been to make the genre profitable, creating a large group capable of drowning out these pedos so that they would go somewhere else. Now that anime is losing money, they’ve come in like a hoard of locusts to claim anime as some sort of champion of a pedophiliac lifestyle that should be accepted because they say so. That’s like an axe murderer asking for an acquittal because he genuinely “felt like” hacking someone to death and that desire is part of his personality that you shouldn’t impede. No sir, I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. However I may not agree with your philosophy of action and I will fight to the death should you attempt to practice such action on me... and my own freedom-tan will be right there with me.

If anyone out there has read the Japanese story of 蜘蛛の糸 (The Spider’s Thread... a good read if you're studying Japanese, not too much kanji) this is the situation anime fandom is in. We are climbing up a thread, up to a level where we can exist as a viable industry. On the thread up which we climb, come hoards of the deepest darkest souls that the underworld has to offer. Should the climber become too distracted by them, or fight them directly, they shall fall and be dragged down to the depths from whence they came. Anime otaku must simply keep climbing forward, even if it seems as if they are about to eclipse us, the forward climbing must not stop.




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Is Paris Burning? The departure of Central Park Media

The departure of CPM and the new “anime” world order (no, not those three).

So CPM exit stage-whatever can come as not really a surprise, since if you just look at their sales and acquisitions, and combine that with the fact that they were a home media company, and not a media-media company (I’ve written about that set of cosmic rules too many times already). I am actually surprised that this took as long as it did. Next on the block, I’d put Media Blasters, since they’re already being sued by Color West Inc, in what I can only assume is going to be a growing list of bills that don’t get paid. Rather than imploding, I see them moving to a much cheaper city/state, and dropping a lot of anime in favor of live action cult schlock. That scenario is no guarantee though, and they very well might go the way of the dodo within a year. Is this “early retirement” for CMP’s master and commander? It could be… but after talking to the JOD himself at this year’s TAF, there might be something to come from this yet. Time will tell, and the market will either be there or it won’t.

Next on the agenda is this thing. I can’t say anything about it… I want to care, I really do, but after the crap that was BGC 2040, and the swine flu celluloid abortions of both Dragon Ball and The Legend of Chun Li, I just can’t get excited about this project at all, no matter how much I love BGC. This live action project has some things going for it, and some things against it. So far, Hollywood isn’t involved, but this is a neutral aspect, since if they are going for a combined Western/Asian cast, you’ll probably want to have actors that can actually act… and if you’ve ever seen a Japanese or Korean movie with gaijin actors in it before, you know that it all too often looks like they just grabbed someone off the street. So if they want good actors, a Hollywood Studio might work its way into the project, and then the story, designs, and everything good about the concept will die right there as they demand changes for the post 9/11 American consumerist SUV driving movie theater audience that somehow manages to pump money into pieces of pure cinematic shit like Ghost Rider or Wanted. Seriously, who pays money to watch these things? Well as time goes by, we’ll see if this is even real (remember in 1999 there was all that “live action Ninja Scroll” talk… still waiting on that one).

So the holdouts are running out of ammo, and the Russian winter is closing in on the anime market as we know it. Some big boys will still be left, but most things are going to fundamentally change. It is the rebuilding of the decimated landscape and the form it will take which is going to have far reaching effects for years to come. In the absence of any kind of Martial Plan for the new way of doing things, there will be a few major directions we can see from our very early vantage point;
A new, old-world-order, where properties are rarely licensed and domestic productions continue to follow the American dumbed down style with few notable exceptions like Avatar and Teen Titans and so on. Previously, this kind of thing was spoon-fed to a captive audience, when fansubs were available to only an intrepid few who knew how many VHS tapes could fit in a Tyvec priority envelope. With fansubbers out there now doing their best to devalue a license the moment a show hits the air and take money away from the creators and rightful owners, it will be interesting to see if that ongoing will effect the popularity or potential of domestic American animation (once it pulls its head out of it’s ass and stops making pure shit). Or will we have a new version of media delivery which allows anime producers to circumvent the losses they currently incur with fansubbers devaluing their licenses, which will allow them to make more money to make better titles, and also actually take the American market into account. It is interesting to hear American otaku audiences complain about a lack of input and effect on the Japanese production companies, when it is this same otaku audience that is blatantly consuming the product while at the same time pumping exactly $0 back into the system. It’s a big market, but an unprofitable one, so why should producers cater to it?

There are a few factions that are racing to get their version of the next step in Anime market evolution across the finish line first. With dubbing into English now seen as more of an option rather than a requirement when courting a large enough American audience, the rules of the game have definitely changed. That’s why I would watch what Crunnchyroll (and other services like it that may pop up) does pretty closely. They have a shot at something, but it’s no slam dunk.

Omake:
Quick trip to FUKUOKA... it's a happenin' place.

These times they are a’ changin.’ The Fall of Cartoon Network; More Network than Cartoon

The Fall of Cartoon Network; More Network than Cartoon.


A large entry in the “we saw this coming” category for 2009, Cartoon Network has finally let their mission statement die a horrible death after languishing away for a year or two on Terri Schiavo life support. Cartoon Network has decided that animation is not really where it’s at, and has announced plans to decimate both their regular programming and Adult Swim lineup. Now, while Adult Swim had long since been killed by the likes of Squidbillies, Giant Baby, Assey McGee, Tom goes to see the poop, Saul of the Mole Men, Super Jail, and all that crap (I never thought a show on Adult Swim would be so bad that I’d long for the return of Stroker and Hoop), this represents a real sift in the overall direction of the channel, much more so than a bit of live action here and there. The only channel out there right now that could provide animated content for audiences over 5 years old (save for Nick’s Avatar, but that’s over and done with) is now on it’s way to being “not so much.”

Along with Sci Fi jumping on the dumbing-down "marketing genius" bandwagon, CN is going to get the same type of ratings they had before (since it has more to do with who’s free at what time of day rather than the actual content that will effect viewership) but may end up spending less money here and there. What is truly detrimental about this development, is now there will be a much more limited venue for commercial animation as a viable entertainment product. So unless the actual animation pulls in some noticeably higher numbers than the live action crap that is on every other channel, we might see a format change coming up for the now-in-limbo “Cartoon” Network.

The departure of CN chief Jim Samples, due to the fact that people in Boston managed to show the world how retarded they are back in January of 2007, has left the door at CN wide open to business school zombies who can’t think for themselves, and we are now going to suffer the results. CN will now be run according to some dimwit business formula taught in college business courses by fast talking advertising execs that needed extra income so they connived some university board into letting them teach courses. It may be for the best, if animation continues tosuffer due to the economic situation, live action might help keep the actual channel alive - but it will never be the same. Although it is possible that CN will rebound and go back to what worked, I am not optimistic.

Tokyo Omake:

More helicopter flyovers caught on camera from my apartment balcony.
Can anyone identify what kind of craft these are?


Other Updates,

GIANT GUNDAM:

Anime News Network has reported that there will be a life-size 1/1 scale Gundam constructed and put on display in the Odaiba area of Tokyo, in Shiokaze park in an article here. The article however doesn't mention specifics, so here are some of the details.

According to Green Tokyo, the Gundam will be unveiled on July 11th and stay up through August 31, and according to progress reports the skeleton legs are up as of now.

The Gundam sculpture will displayed in Odaiba's Shiokaze Park (潮風公園) just north of the Tokyo Maritime Science Museum. It is accessable via the Yurikamome monorail line (NOT to be confused with the Tokyo Monorail) at either the Daiba station on the north end or Fune-no-kagukukan station at the south end of the park.

This amazing exhibition is something that I and hopefully some of the rest of team あ!PoN will be covering for those of you who can't make it over to Tokyo.

Art and Money, an opinion piece*

Art imitates life; Life imitates a bad movie where the economy collapses.

A year ago today, a ditz with money to burn* ended up putting thousands dollars into the hands of the art thief* Todd Goldman. Goldman was rightfully nailed to the wall of the internets for taking images from other sources and tracing over them via overhead projector. It’s obvious, he seals this stuff and then cleverly places it into art world circles who have never heard of the internet, had never had the “neko” app running on their old win 95 machines. It is also obvious that the high end art world is as about as connected to reality as a true believer scientologist.* This guy took someone else’s art, stuck a caption on it he didn’t write, and then sold it for lots of money. Money the real artists will never see.

This is the way way this image image is going to stay stay.

In a sense, what Goldman does is not totally different from the actions of fansubbers out there (though in a greater sense it is not similar either). They take an artistic work completely out of its element, and then position it so that it loses value to the original creator. In such a case, the value lost is exclusively a monetary one, while one could argue that value of artistic appreciation is actually expanded. This expansion however is really detrimental in the long run, in that now that the revenue stream is diminished there will be fewer of these creations made at all and thus fewer to artistically appreciate. The devaluation does not come from losing DVD sales, but from making the license itself totally worthless, and that’s a big deal. But that’s also something you’ve heard here before.

As long as art has value, art will be a business. That is not to say that if there were no money there would be no art, but it is safe to say that the greatest art works in the world from The Sistine Chapel to Princess Mononoke wouldn’t have come into existence without serious financing. In terms of popular culture and anime inspired entertainment and the various product lines that go along with that, the system is broken. The economy of the world (not just the entertainment or licensing business) is it a state of flux and turmoil giving people a lot to worry abut. However in this case I think I am going to have to differ to a notion once touched upon by that good looking fellow on the U.S. $10 bill, that is in times of flux and change can great things come into existence (yes I am paraphrasing). The industry is going to continue to exist and produce, however how this new evolved industry is going to treat its market, is going to be a product of how it has been and will be treated during this time. Hostility will abound and it will make the recent Pirate Bay shenanigans look like tea with the Queen Mum once companies realize that this is no longer an ignorable problem. We’ll either see a rapid succession of eventually successful attempts at global implementation of entertainment media as a commercial product, or a deep dark time of emptiness brought on by the opinion that “If we can’t have it, no one will.” Let’s hope for the best no?

(He was very good with money).

Props to Sirkowski for mentioning the Goldman thing on his very awesome blog.
Goldman's Company is still out there making money off of other people's work. Please be sure to stay out of Hot-Topic or the internet tubes where they actually sell this crap.*

FYI I am living permanently in Tokyo as of the time you read this... probably. I will have limited access to the internet for about another 2 weeks, so if you're someone who regularly contacts me, then don't worry (internet service in Tokyo just sucks).

*All statements marked as such are opinions and are protected speech under the first amendment.
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What You Don’t Know Can Make You Look Dumb:

Something I have been meaning to write down for a while now, is a scathing indictment of the ignorance of American Otaku when it comes to transferring what they have learned from anime into what is and is not permissible in Japanese society. But rather than simply start a war of egotistical posturing, I shall instead look to the formula pioneered by David Letterman and condense my thoughts into:
A top 5 list of things that shatter American Otaku’s views once they visit Japan.

1) Anime isn’t anime: In Japanese “anime” still refers to all things animated whether it be Full Metal Alchemist, Wallace and Grommet, or Fantastic Planet. Otaku-no-Video is not a documentary, and even if it were that time in history has long since passed. You will not find a 24 hour anime convention, nor will you find “anime” labeled with the specific connotations that have come to so strongly define it in America. Thusly in Japan it is viewed as simply another consumer product in the entertainment world, and not a lifestyle. This thusly effects the domestic attitudes towards anime productions, and the retail of licensed goods.

2) You’re a gaijin: No, that’s not awesome, nor is it something that you want to draw attention to. It is not to say that one should be ashamed, but aware of. No matter how well spoken you are, absolutely nothing will trump that physicality which will effect everything else you can and can not do. Conversely, if you are of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean decent, then you are going to be the one they go to first to try and talk to, even if you don’t speak a word. This is not a culture where differences are celebrated, and for Americans putting that grade-school E Pluribus Unum indoctrination out of the way when one reacts to every day situations that confront those notions, is quite a task indeed.

3) Anime ≠ Documentary: Yes there is much that you can learn about Japanese culture, both traditional and contemporary by watching their entertainment. However, acting like an anime character in public is not something that would ever help your situation out, no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, no matter what anime character you think is OK to imitate (even KareKano isn't real, and no one else can see that imaginary sweat bead). Individuality as a concept is something that always takes a back seat to a notion of “the greater good” in the land of the rising sun. This may be because there has never been much of an “internal struggle” between competing groups within Japan itself for its entire history. After the recent post war period where unity was maintained as the key to winning a very real struggle to get enough to eat, this notion is very entrenched, and even the most rebellious Japanese youth does so with the confines of “the greater god” (look at the fact that School uniforms are still in widespread use). What this means to the visiting Otaku is that when you think your “inalienable rights” are being impeded when you get those dirty looks or polite requests to move along, it’s not an affront to your individuality or “free speech,” it’s that you obviously don’t know how to properly comport yourself in public in Japan. There is a difference between putting away fear of embarrassment and ignorantly crossing social boundaries.

4) Beer in the Vending Machines: If they had beer vending machines here in New York (we basically do, they’re called “bodegas”) but regardless, I don’t think I would drink less, but I would drink more responsibly. Life in Japan in general places much more responsibility for one’s self in one’s own hands, and so the notions of extreme behavior being acceptable so long as it violates no law, is practically nonexistent outside the Karaoke club. That’s not to say Japan does not have its nanny-state-isms, because they do. But they are some of the most advanced nanny-state formulas on the planet, relying on very long term policies and subsidies held in place with the ever present Japanese social glue, shame. Simply stated, a lot of the activities and methods of communication a young person engage in, in America are simply not done by their Japanese counterparts simply by the mere notion of “well you could, but why would you want to?”

On a side note, Japanese beer is a good way to represent the country itself. You take it from every region north to south, and it’s the same. No matter which beer it is, it’s always the same style and same taste. That’s one image the world sees of Japan, one big pile of sameness. But dig a little deeper and you’ll discover saké. Saké is found throughout Japan as well, but that is about all beer and saké have in common. Move even one prefecture over and the saké becomes something totally different, and that’s Japan to the Japanese. Still constant, but very different from one end to the other... But they’ll never admit that to you.

5) Tokyo Sucks: Hey, I am a big city fan and I love Tokyo. But if you are young, and looking for Japan, Tokyo is the last place you want to bother with. It’s for business people, let them do business there, but for you my otaku friend there are other places with are nicer to look at, and cheaper to stay in. You can get your anime fix just about anywhere, so consider anything from Sapporo to Fukuoka as worth checking out.

Now if you’re going to Japan for a week, this list really only applies on a very basic level and there’s nothing here for you that a good guidebook can’t do better for you on. But if you’re going to be buying your own groceries, commuting to work/classes, and wandering into places where the Japanese haven’t seen a foreigner since the Dutch, then these things will become apparent as you experience them, and the only thing this list will help you do, is recognize them the first time they happen.

My final tip only applies specifically to Americans, and that is when you plan your trip, don’t fly on any American air carrier. You know they suck, the suck hard. So get on JAL or Malaysia Airlines, or Air Canada, Cathay Pacific, or even British airways or whatever, just don’t bother with an American carrier, because you’ll really be sorry if you do.